With the end of the year comes the time for retrospection and reminiscing—though my preference was for hurled insults and vicious mockery. So in that vein I have composed a list to commemorate the best of 2013:
The Five Best Villain Failures of 2013
Here I have compiled the most incompetent, short sighted, accident prone rogues to have ever plotted malicious intent in the whole spectrum of media. In short, here be evil Fu#% ups a plenty. Let’s kick this thing off then.
1. Zombies
With the influx of zombie movies, games, and comics; it seems these shambling terrors are everywhere. But let’s really take a look at these things. In most of the places they pop up, there are hundreds of them—most of which are quickly and hilariously dispatched with ease. I’m surprised there isn’t a compilation with the Benny Hill track edited over the sound. However, for every 99 zombies that shamble themselves onto some spikes or fall off a building there is that one that catches a survivor and rips out all of their vitals. So for most of the time, these creepers are hilarious failure machines, but it’s that one zombie that messes up everyone’s day.
http://youtu.be/jWuoVyHa674
2. Jon Hamm as Captain Murphy in Archer‘s Sea Tunt: Part II
It came as a great surprise to Sealab 2021 fans to see the familiar research station appear on the finale of Archer. What was even better was the performance by Jon Hamm as the station’s Captain, sole occupant, and resident basket case. Through both his insanity and incompetence—and quite a blunder by Sterling Archer, he manages to end his career and life with a hilarious flourish culminating in his liver falling out of his anus.
3. Microsoft Executives
In the run-up to the next gen console releases, there was some pretty strange talk floating around. There were rumors the X-Bone games would only work on one console, that’s it, forever. No sharing. Also it emerged that there would be no backwards compatibility on the new console. So that whole library of games you had? Get ready to buy them all over again for slightly better graphics. With all of the talk and rumors, it sounded like the people at the top of Microsoft were 80’s corporate villains, lighting their cigars with the paper route money of a crippled cancer boy. But then E3 happened. What once seemed like our new gaming overlords now looked to be a clown car careening towards the mountain of elephant dung. And though the next gen wars have kicked off in earnest, we can still cling to that video of Sony’s response to Microsoft and remember that the Wii U outsold the PS4 and X-Bone combined.
4. Robert and Rosalind Lutece from Bioshock: Infinite
Though they are by far the coolest out of the game Bioshock: Infinite, their origin story is still a steaming pile of failure. Don’t get me wrong, most superheroes go through a science experiment gone wrong but there’s was a doozy. After finding their alternate dimensional selves, twisting up the fabric of time like a cat with some shiny ribbon, their employer threw a wrench in their machine. Boom! Dead. Except not exactly. Now they have the ability to exist everywhere and anywhere in time and space. They use this new found power to stand around Booker Dewit and be sarcastic; really what all of us would strive to use the power for.
5. The Monarch from The Venture Brothers
Though Malcom has a continuous history of failure with the Venture brothers, this year he topped himself. In the finale for this season, the Monarch apprehended Doc Venture and was intent to torture him with all sorts of imaginative tools and tricks—though the pain these tortures would induce are arguable. However, he quickly discerns that Doc Venture’s life is a steaming pile of crap and there’s nothing to be done to a pile of crap that would make it more crap. So after years and years of his personal vendetta against the “great” Rusty Venture, the Monarch gave up… all while wearing that ridiculous outfit from Flash Gordon.